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Voters soundly defeat Columbus school levy

District must earn trust, Good says; Coleman to fight on

View SlideshowRequest to buy this photoEamon Queeney | DispatchInterim Columbus school Superintendent Dan Good, second from right, takes the podium to speak about the levy defeat after Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, right, during the Franklin County Democratic Party gathering at the Hilton in Downtown. With them are Columbus City Council President Andrew J. Ginther and school board President Carol Perkins.

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Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman has repeated over the past several months that business,
labor, civic and faith leaders were aligned behind Issue 50, the Columbus City Schools’ levy.

But voters weren’t behind it. They defeated the 23.5 percent property-tax increase yesterday
that would have shared local money with charter schools for the first time.

The measure went down 69 percent to 31 percent, with all precincts reporting, despite the
months-long work of Coleman’s Education Commission, a new state law and a multimillion-dollar
campaign. A companion issue that would have created a new district auditor position answerable to
city, county and school district officials also lost, 61 percent to 39 percent.

It was the first loss for a Columbus City Schools levy in 23 years.

“You can’t fool the people,” said Jonathan Beard, who helped organize opposition to the levy. “
Any time you spend $2 1/2 million and you can’t get to 50 percent against opponents that had
$4,000, you just had a bad idea to start with.”

Despite the levy defeat, Coleman said efforts to improve the schools will continue: “This is
just the first inning of a nine-inning game.”

It’s not clear whether that means the district will go back to the ballot in the spring.

Interim school Superintendent Dan Good said it’s too early to talk about it.

“The voters have spoken,” Good said. “We respect that voice and pledge to continue to listen to
their message.”

The district needs to restore voters’ faith by being more trustworthy and more transparent, Good
said.

School board President Carol Perkins said the board will work with the mayor and city council to
implement what changes it can without the levy.

The mayor announced more than a year ago that he was stepping in to help Columbus schools.

He did so as former Superintendent Gene Harris, who had led the district for more than a decade,
unexpectedly announced that she would retire in June amid a data-rigging scandal.

Coleman convened a 25-member task force to study how to improve schools in Columbus.

The school board bristled at Coleman’s involvement, passing a resolution that said
they were in charge of the city’s schools. But Coleman and the business community made it
clear that they were going to make changes to improve schools, with or without the board’s support.
Board members soon became participants.

With union leaders, business representatives, clergy members and politicians at the table, the
commission made a series of recommendations that it said would transform the district.

Those recommendations — including expanding pre-kindergarten, decentralizing the district’s
Downtown administration and embracing high-performing charter schools — became the basis for Issue
50. A report card in August that showed the district earned four F’s, three D’s and two C’s seemed
to add to the dire need for change.

But levy opponents pointed to two key reasons not to support it: First, money would go to
charter schools; second, the district hadn’t cut loose those involved in the data scandal. They
argued that voters should not approve a levy until those individuals were gone.

Most of the employees who the district’s internal auditor and
Dispatch analysis found had changed students’ grades or attendance records are still in
place. A handful have resigned or retired.

“The community was traumatized by the data rigging,” said Kwesi Kambon, who supported the “no”
voters and is a former Columbus schools administrator. “To then be asked to support a levy that was
such a huge increase with so many unanswered questions was more than the public could take.”

The defeat is disappointing, said Alex Fischer, who leads the Columbus Partnership, a group of
the region’s business leaders. But voters sent a message that the business community will listen
to, he said in a written statement last night.

“Today, voters expressed a lack of trust in our school district — a sentiment that we
understand. The voters are asking for reform before new taxes. The fact that over half of our kids
will wake up and attend a failing school in the morning is a reminder of the challenges we must
address,” he said.